Andrew O'Hara
T-Mobile CEO John Legere name dropped Apple Watch during the company's quarterly earnings call on Wednesday, crediting the wearable with helping fuel customer growth during the June quarter.
During an investor conference call, Legere highlighted Apple Watch (and wearables as a whole) as helping increase branded postpaid customers by a million for the quarter.
"We also had strong branded postpaid net additions of one million, supported by continued strong growth of wearables, particularly the Apple Watch," Legere said.
The company touted 1.6 million total net additions and 4 percent revenue growth year-over-year for the period.
In their official earnings release, T-Mobile again mentions Apple Watch as the driving force behind a huge increase in "other net customers," meaning users of non-phone devices. That metric increased by nearly 50,000 from the same time last year.
"Branded postpaid other net customer additions were 331,000 in Q2 2018, up 47,000 from Q2 2017," the firm said. "Year-over-year the increase was due to higher gross customer additions from connected devices, specifically the Apple watch."
During Apple's own quarterly results, it was revealed that the Apple Watch sales continued to grow, increasing by "strong double digits" to set a new March quarter record.
Later this fall, Apple is expected to release the Apple Watch Series 4, which is rumored to see the line's first major redesign with slimmer bezels and larger screens. The device will likely ship alongside Apple's watchOS 5 firmware, which is currently in testing by developers.
AppleInsider Staff
Malcolm Owen
Oliver Haslam
Wesley Hilliard
William Gallagher
Christine McKee
7 Comments
But but but youtubers are telling me Apple Watch is a failure!! I don't know who to believe!!
/s
"We also had strong branded postpaid net additions of one million, supported by continued strong growth of wearables, the Apple Watch,"
Fixed. Why do I get the feeling his original quote is some politically correct BS? Are people actually buying the android watch crap?
I don't think I've heard people say the Watch is a failure much these days. I still hear that it's useless, but I'm not hearing so much about it being a failure in terms of sales.
I used to say, "It's the first thing I put on in the morning and the last thing I take off at night," but it's probably been about 18 months (when I was still rocking my Series 0) that I started wearing it to bed to record my sleep. Now it's on pretty much all day except for when I shower and on some occasional days I may put it on the charger to top it off. It's small battery so it charges quickly.
I do still say, "It's unnecessary, yet indispensable," but even that may change once watchOS 5 brings Spotify and SiriusXM apps, and Series 4 brings the potential of a larger display and some additional features. I may even keep using my soon to be 2 year old iPhone 7 that will soon no longer require any payments to Apple's iPhone Upgrade Program, which means, for me, it may well be necessary with the iPhone moving into the unnecessary category save for still having to initially pair and sync the device.
One feature still missing that I'd like to see is the Watch's BT being able to pair with my vehicles. They can talk to each other for pairing, but the pairing fails every time. Not sure who's to blame for that, but I assume it's Apple.
I still have my OG series 0 Apple Watch and I was a person who was very averse to wearing watches prior to getting this. It has become indispensable to me -- mostly as a "receptionist," if you like, for my iPhone. The Watch only shows me notifications from people or things I have deemed important, taps me rather than makes noise, allows me to control iTunes remotely, and has really helped me improve my health overall (and weight specifically). I will likely get a new one by Xmas, not sure if I'm willing to go with a Series 3, but ... yes, that might move my iPhone to the "not needed everywhere anymore" category -- which is really remarkable when you think about it.